Lens Metric Scores

Further readings for the Nikon 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6

To provide photographers with a broader perspective about mobiles, lenses and cameras, here are links to articles, reviews, and analyses of photographic equipment produced by DxOMark, renown websites, magazines or blogs.

After the announcement of the flagship Nikon 1 V3 the company revealed a new less expensive model sharing many of the features, including the 18-Mpix CX format (1-inch type) sensor with an improved hybrid AF system including 105 on-chip phase-detection points covering most of the frame, and new Expeed 4 level processor. Read on to find out how well this new model performs.

Launched alongside the Nikon 1 V3 hybrid camera on the 13th March 2014, the VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 PD-Zoom and VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 are two new lenses for the CX-format Nikon 1 series. Boosting the number of Nikon 1 lenses to 11, the system now boasts lenses covering a focal range of 6.7-300mm, which is equivalent to 18-810mm in 35mm terms.

When launched, the EOS-M complete with the EF-M 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS STM zoom was $899, but the kit can now be had for as little as $345. With lens available separately for $269 that sounds too good to be true. Read on to see how well the combination performs.

Designed with compactness in mind, micro 4/3 lenses go for the smallest size possible most of the time. But to achieve these dimensions, they sometimes have to compromise on image quality. In this review, we cover a wide range of standard lenses, both prime and zoom, and show that not all lenses are equal in terms of the trade-off between compactness and image quality.

Nikon put a lot of effort to design lenses that offer the best balance of image quality and portability, and apparently it paid off. Let’s look closely at how these lenses perform compared to their direct competitors.

The long awaited and rumored mirrorless Nikon camera was finally announced today. And it’s not just one but a pair of new mirrorless compact “1 System” cameras that are coming to compete with the Sony NEX 7, the Pentax Q, the Olymps PEN EP3 or even the Fujifilm FinePix X10. These 2 first models in this new Nikon 1 series are the Nikon J1 and Nikon V1.

Comments

Test series 1 lenses vs FX & DX Nikkor lenses with the FT-1 adapter

We have seen the test results of both types of lenses FX/DX and the Series 1 lenses on their respective sensors or cameras, but in my opinion it would be great if we could get a comparison test for both the DX/FX lenses installed on the Nikon V1/V2 by means of Nikons FT-1 adapter and se how they compare with the native series 1 lenses. Taking into consideration the fact that due to the huge 2.7 crop factor the CX sensor of the series 1 cameras have, it would be very interesting to see how well the 30-110 VR does for example with the 15-105 VR of the DX series with the mentioned FT-1 adapter on the same CX sensor. In theory since on the DX/FT-1 set we only use the center of the lens image, we could find that the aberrations, vignetting and other radial aware defects found on such a lens are left out of the equation, giving as a result a better overall quality picture. For that matter how about the result of a 300 f/1.4 VR2 image as seen in the V1 CX sensor compared to the cropped-to-size portion on a D4 sensor? I bet in both cases we would find interesting results due to the very different behaviour of the CX and FX sensors and the fact that on the CX sensor be are only using the better part of the image produced by such a terrific lens.

First replies for this comment

I also would like to see this. I use the 18-105, 50/1.8 (AF-S) and 55-300 via the adapter, and it certainly seems to me that there's advantages all round - no vignetting at all, barely any chromatic aberration, and an arguable increase in sharpness. This seems to match the comparison results (when you scale the DX sensor results to take account for the cropped size), but I'd still like to see an honest head-to-head test.